The LONG ISLAND MOTOR PARKWAY

The Long Island Motor Parkway may well be one of the world's first roads that could be described as a "high-speed, limited-access,
reinforced-concrete, landscaped parkway"; it is certainly the first in the United States.

There are a number of chronological discrepancies on these pages; they will be corrected as time allows.

The above map has been criticized for being TOO approximate; here's a 1927 map
on which all I have done is to add a green highlight between the lines (________),
add some BLUE to Little Neck and Manhasset Bays and Lakes Success and Ronkonkoma,
and approximate the actual final western terminus which did NOT end at Black Stump Road
(73rd Avenue, as shown) but at Nassau Boulevard (later Horace Harding Boulevard - today's
Long Island Expressway), [which I have extended westward (HHB? - _ _ _ _ ) from what was shown on the old map]
at 193rd Street [WEST (left) and EAST (right)]:

Note also, per my 1994 Hagstrom's Nassau County Atlas, pages 3 and 11, that the boundaries between Manhasset Hills (page 3, H18) and
Williston Park and East Williston (page 11, J18), on the south, and Searingtown (H/J17) on the north ARE, in fact, the old RoW of the LIMP!

Roger Cooper reminded me (06 Nov 99) of Senator Camaerer Park, which abuts the LIMP, still preserved under the name of Highway Drive, in
Albertson. I drove around that familiar area (I used to live nearby in Mineola in the mid-'60s) and have since wandered afoot with the
trusty digital to document the area between the Queens-Nassau county line and Roslyn Road.

WARNING! Historians should note that the right-of-way of the Motor Parkway and that of Alexander T. Stewart's Central
Railroad of Long Island, now the LIRR's Central Branch, paralleled each other in several areas and should NOT
be casually confused. The LIMP RoW is the one under the LIPA (ex-LILCO) lines in Nassau County and far western Suffolk County
(at least as far east as the Maxess Road area or further). Even so, there are areas where the LIPA lines and the LIMP RoW do NOT coincide, especially
around the old Sperry plant in Lake Success, in Bethpage where the LIPA lines follow the old Central line and in the center of Bethpage State Park, where the
LIPA lines veer E and the LIMP RoW goes N, at the LIPA line branching in the 110/Ruland/Maxess area, along Bagatelle Road south of the LIE, etc.

Here's a map of the area where the LIMP and the predecessor road of the LIRR's Central Branch, the Central RR of LI, were coincident or nearly so,
courtesy of Vince Fitzgerald, showing the two RoWs (RsoW?):

(Click on the thumbnail to download a 251Kb image.

For a better Nassau-Suffolk map (1928), see the LIMP Maps Page (in work).

(The provenance of this image has been lost; it was
apparently courtesy of the Garden City Toll Lodge Museum)

The Long Island Motor Parkway ca. 1908,
probably well east of the Hempstead Plains;
Notice how incredibly barren the area was
as it was on the frontispiece (above), as well.

NEWSDAY for 11 Jun 2002 (page B9) had an article on an exhibit at the Museums at Stony Brook (the Carriage House) about sports on LI.
A prized display was the original Vanderbilt Cup, on loan from the Smithsonian Institution (it's normally on display at the Henry Ford Museum
in Dearborn, Michigan).

GIVING CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE - to the best of my recollection, my fascination with the Long Island Motor Parkway began (again?) when noted historian
Bob Miller, who I've known since ca. 1960, inveigled me into attending one of his great illustrated lectures, in this particular case about some old road called
the Motor Parkway. One slide that sticks in my mind even today (20 Dec 2010) was of the roof of one of the toll lodges (one of the Brentwood lodges?), lying
on the ground at the side of the road (a SW corner, as I recall). So, perhaps we can blame all this on Bob.
(20 Dec 2010)

HISTORY OF THE LONG ISLAND MOTOR PARKWAY

@ - A Note on NOMENCLATURE - The official name of this pioneer highway was the

LONG ISLAND MOTOR PARKWAY

NOT the VANDERBILT MOTOR PARKWAY;

the surviving active easternmost 13-mile right-of-way in Suffolk County,
County Route 67, is now used as public roads named variously
"Motor Parkway", "Vanderbilt Parkway", and "Vanderbilt Motor Parkway".

The Long Island Motor Parkway was the brainchild of William K(issam). Vanderbilt, Jr. (
a.k.a. "II"). It ran from the Kissena Corridor# in Queens County, convenient to the New York (Manhattan) ferries and
the Queensborough (59th Street) Bridge, which had opened in 1909, and to Vanderbilt's Lake Success home, "Deepdale", out along
the Island, south of Vanderbilt's other estate in Centerport, the "Eagle's Nest" (today's
Vanderbilt Museum), to Lake Ronkonkoma, a whopping distance of some 48 miles.

# - some accounts say it started in Flushing (at the Hillside Avenue/Rocky Hill Road Toll Lodge) but that was later, in 1928; it started at
Lakeville Road in Great Neck as the western terminus in 1910 (43 miles to Ronkonkoma) {at the northwestern corner of the Sperry site -
northeastern corner of Marcus and Lakeville Road}, with an extension west to Rocky Hill Road (Springfield Boulevard) in 1911; the section to
Kissena Corridor was added later - at Nassau Boulevard (what is now Horace Harding Boulevard - the south service road of the L. I. Expressway) and
195th Street*. A two-mile feeder road (now Harned Road) north to Jericho Turnpike [Rte.25] in Commack was also added in 1928 (opened 01 Jul)
to ease access to the Commack area (and, not incidentally, to WKV's Eagles Nest in Centerport).

* - The RoW ran (runs) N-S between 199th Street and Cross Island (Francis Lewis) Boulevard from Union Turnpike to HHB; the north end bent NW and ended
at 195th Street but I believe there was an apron or entry ramp extending as far west as 193rd Street.

Bob Miller was misquoted in the New York TIMES (26 Apr 1998) as saying it started at Springfield Boulevard, at the edge of today's Alley Pond Park, and was
extended west and north in the 1920s (to Horace Harding Boulevard and 199th St.).

Michael Abbey wrote (11 Feb 1999) "The part of the LIMP in Great Neck ran through the Phipps Estate, which is now Great Neck South Middle and High School. In fact,
they recently tore down a toll house that was just south of the Great Neck South Middle School property (near Lakeville Road). This would be almost adjacent to
Lake Road and Lakeville Road. I believe the school still uses part of the roadway as a service path to it's athletic fields. The old LIMP continues East
South East, where it runs into the Northern State Parkway. There used to be a bridge over the parkway there, but when they expanded to three lanes in each
direction many years ago, they tore it down. At that point it crosses over to New Hyde Park road, and a few hundred feet to the East, the old bridge that crosses
over the LIMP can be found." This is the bridge in NHP that I mention and that Mike has photographed on his website. In fact, the
toll lodge is still there, recognizably buried in the back of a mini-mansion at 351
Lakeville Road and, yes, the RoW is still the school's service path.

Tom Walsh added (13 Feb 1999), "A Lake Success history book led me to the conclusion that the road on the southern end of the property is indeed Motor Parkway.
The toll house may not have been demolished, but may have been altered beyond recognition. My local research shows that the road (heading west from the
school property) took an abrupt turn south on the west side of Lakeville Road. This was so that it could then bend back westerly and pass Deepdale (Willie
the builder's mansion) to its south." Tom went on, "Look at the driveways on the property of the temple on Lakeville Road, just across from the school.
I suspect this is a remnant reflecting that southerly turn."

Fred Hadley called all this {#} to a screeching halt (16 Oct 1999), effectively demolishing my theory about the route near the city line with this definitive
description: "It actually followed the path of today's 74th Avenue which deadends at the employee parking lot of Hillside Medical Center.
It then ran along the east fence of the Glen Oaks Golf Course (today's North Shore Towers course). The LIMP crossed the Northern State Parkway
¼-mile west of the Lakeville Road overpass." So it came no closer than ¼-mile from my theoretical route by Lakeville and Union Turnpike.
Fred added, "Of course Willie K. owned the land from Union Turnpike to the LIE and from Little Neck Parkway so it was easy to obtain the right of way from himself!"
[Edited slightly.]

Sylvia Adcock*, in NEWSDAY's "Long Island: Our Story" historical sketches, wrote that it was, "the nation's first road
designed exclusively for automobiles - - - The reinforced concrete road also was the first highway to use bridges and overpasses to eliminate intersections.
Called 'Long Island's Appian Way' in promotional material, it was a road ahead of its time."

Long Island Studies Institute, Nassau County MuseumA scene from the 1908 Vanderbilt Cup Race on a part of the then-abuilding Long Island Motor Parkway.

The LI Motor Parkway had gotten its impetus when a spectator at the third Vanderbilt Cup race (in 1906) was killed by a race car which slammed into the crowd;
Vanderbilt was deeply ashamed, even though unruly spectators crowded up against, and onto, the course (as can be clearly seen in contemporary photos), and
he and his sportsman friends, including Ralph Peters, President of the LIRR, Harry Payne Whitney, August Belmont, President of the IRT, Frederick Bourne,
President of the Singer Sewing Machine Co., and John Jacob Astor, meeting at the elegant, old Garden City Hotel, decided build a private road for auto racing,
which they started planning in 1906. One of their first ideas was to build a 35-mile long private racing road from Floral Park to Riverhead, with high-speed
turning loops at Hicksville and Riverhead. Actual construction, of the 11 miles between Garden City and Bethpage, started with 2,000 men on 06 Jun 1907
(Adcock puts it in 1908) in a barren field west of Central Park (Bethpage) just off Jerusalem Avenue in what later became Levittown.

The 16'-wide road (later widened to 22') was opened virtually its full length in 1911. Vanderbilt Cup races had been
run on that route in 1908, 1909, and 1910 (an ALCO* won in 1909 and 1910) and new models of autos were tested (for a healthy fee, of
course) on the road. Tolls were originally $2.00, then, briefly, $1.50, and mostly $1.00, until they were dropped to 40˘ in 1935 after Robert Moses
opened his Northern State Parkway, part of his great parkway system begun in 1929, opened in 1933. The original plan to run on out to the Suffolk
County seat in Riverhead, an additional 23 miles, was shelved when the land required could not be acquired.

Those three Vanderbilt Cup races were run, both on the incomplete road and the nearly-finished road, but, when four spectators were killed and over twenty injured in 1910, racers refused to use
the course.

That refusal, auto manufacturers moving to the Detroit area and testing their cars out in the mid-West, and the competition of the Moses parkway, were its death knell and the Motor Parkway
finally closed on Easter Sunday (17 Apr) of 1938. In lieu of payment of back taxes amounting to some $80,000 to $90,000, the right-of-way was deeded to the counties through which it
passed in 1938. Most of the right-of-way in Queens County is now a bicycle and hiking path, while that in Nassau County and in western Suffolk County was (and is) used for a high-tension
line r-o-w by LILCO - the Long Island Lighting Company (now LIPA - the LI Power Authority).

The Long Island Motor Parkway may or may not have been the world's first limited-access auto parkway; this discussion has been moved to LIMP History page 4 and
expanded there.

The Motor Parkway was also noted for its twelve unique little toll houses, termed "toll lodges", which were two-story architectural gems and included rather nice living quarters
with two bedrooms for the toll takers and their families. The original toll house from the Garden City (Clinton Street/Glen Cove Road/Guinea Woods Road) entry is preserved in Garden City
(on Seventh Street, across from the AAA/ACNY office) as the headquarters of the Garden City Chamber of Commerce. It was moved to its present location in March, 1989, and was designed by
John Russell Pope, who also designed Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History, Baltimore's Museum of Art, and Washington's National Gallery, National Archives, and Constitution Hall
(DAR). The twelve Toll Lodges were:

The parkway had a unique guard rail system, with four-sided concrete posts which held two (or more) strands of twisted iron ribbon (some of which are still in place at Garden City and elsewhere
- see below and the LIMP Continuation page). There were also posts with large (~2" x ~4") rectangular openings, which must have been for wood rails; these are
visible in Queens (see Jeff Saltzman's photos linked below) and in Nassau and Suffolk (see my continuation pages).

{material which followed has been moved from this main LIMP page on 13 Feb 2002.}

See also a Motor Parkway-Clinton Street reminiscence by the late LI aviation pioneer, George Dade (see my AVIATION page). George Dade's father and uncle, and
later George and his brother, owned the northwest corner of Clinton Street and Old Country Road, diagonally across from Curtiss/Roosevelt Field; the Motor Parkway formed the western boundary of
their property (coincidentally, I worked in the Dade office building there ca. 1957 and many years later showed George a photo of me in his basement - naturally, there is a shopping center there,
now) - moved to Page 5.
(27 Jul 2014)